How is it sometimes possible to fit centuries into one day?

After months of planning and basically freaking out about this trip, I have finally made it to the way-to-hell-and-gone town of Tabora, Tanzania. It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m sitting in our living room, having commandeered a fellow volunteer’s laptop so I can write peacefully and not have to worry about spending too much time on a public computer. Most of the other girls are asleep, having only dragged themselves home at 6.30 this morning after a big night on the town (such as it is) to commemorate the departure of Marieke and Elizabeth, two vols who are now leaving as I arrive.

It’s not often I am lost for words but it certainly happened yesterday when I arrived in Tabora. I left the Salvation Army Hostel in Dar at 7am yesterday morning, having said goodbye to my three fellow Swahili strugglers who are now safely at the orphanage in Mwanza, about two days’ train ride from here (but luckily, only a plane flight from Dar). We’d only got to bed around midnight the night before (having passed out all the other nights at 9pm from sheer linguistic gymnastics) so it was a tired me who landed on an airstrip in the middle of nowhere, as it appeared from the plane window, at around 11am. I followed the crowd to an arrivals room and was basically expecting to be met by Dr Sekusua, the founder and director of HAPO (Health Action Promotion Organisation) who would take me back to the compound, maybe show me the market in town, and leave me with the other volunteers until Monday morning.

But I forgot I am in Tanzania where hospitality is nine-tenths of the law, so I was actually met by Dr Sekasua, Mama Sekasua, Sheki (a local volunteer), Elizabeth and Marieke (outgoing vols), Mandi, Sandra, Anne-Marie and Rebecca (who are here with me for another 6 weeks). That was just in the arrivals room (the airport only has two rooms). Then, Elizabeth said to me “I hope you’re ready – there’s a surprise waiting for you”. We went outside and they had brought all 35 kids in the program to the airport to meet me…. They all clustered around shaking my hand and carrying my bags for me and giving me cuddles and saying “Shikamoo” (what you say to an older person you respect) and “Karibou!” (welcome). It was the most intense experience because I never expected such a welcoming committee, or for the children to be so warm and inviting, or so many feelings and impressions and emotions to hit me all at once….and I hadn’t even left the airport yet. We all climbed into the back of the Doctor’s truck (this is the way HAPO travels….see pic below) and rattled away to the HAPO centre with all the kids singing “doh a deer” and my personal favourite which made me cry, “consider yourself at home” – see the video below which I hope you can all open because I am starting to realise that photographs really don’t capture what video can.

I keep thinking I can’t describe what that felt like but I should try. Maybe I feel as though I had such a powerful emotional reaction to realising I was really here, that I was really watching my ancient dream come true, that I’m not sure I can share it. The best way I think I can describe it is to say I felt like something inside me was overflowing. At the moment in time, as I was saying “Marahaba” to the children and cuddling them and not knowing where to look or whose questions to respond to first, that exact moment was the best moment of my life (that I can remember). It was as though I had been waiting for myself without realising how long or how hard I had been waiting, and I had finally caught up to me. I’m not sure how long that feeling will last or if I will trump it or scorn it in a week, but in the interests of sincere writing I will take a risk and put it out there anyway.

I was taken to the compound where all the vols live, and I tell you, from the emails and the interview, I was expecting nothing more than a tent provided by the UN. But this is basically paradise. It’s a huge and lovely house (by Tanzanian standards) with five bedrooms and big living room with gigantic windows that have no glass and look out onto the front yard. We have guards and also a cook named Adela who comes during the week to prepare our evening meal (I felt a bit strange about that but I was told that at the end of a working day, I’ll be completely exhausted and cooking for myself will be the furthest thing from my mind). The other vols are from Phoenix, Arizona (Mandi), Dublin (Anne-Marie), Sandra (originally Colombia and now Georgia), Rebecca and Elizabeth (UK) and, bizarrely, Kalgoorlie (Marieke), and have all been incredibly welcoming and friendly and keen to make sure I feel at home. We’re all around the same age and they were quick to assure me that this is the best program Volunteer Africa offers and that I am going to absolutely love it here.

After dumping my stuff, we went to the HAPO centre to meet the staff and pick up the children who we then piled back in the back of the HAPOmobile and took to the cow market for a picnic. A “picnic” means we spread out a UNHCR tarpaulin on the ground, the kids played Frisbee and soccer for a while and then came and sat down for a session of imba and cheza (singing and dancing) while our “picnic” was being prepared. So, here in Tanzania, you pick your picnic while it is still bleating and then wait for it to be slaughtered and barbecued. An hour later some plates of fairly sad-looking goat bones were distributed along with bottles of soda and I found myself sitting on a tarpaulin with 35 Tanzanian children, watching three goats grazing in a field of mango trees while gnawing on the bones of a fourth. The goat wasn’t bad… at least, the bones weren’t bad. I’m not sure this one actually had any body mass index. That’s the thing about eating here… the meat actually tastes like meat. As in, when I bite into a piece of chicken, I swear I can taste its whole life. I can taste the feed and the soil and the grain and its feathers….I am not in the land of hormone-laden Steggles anymore, that’s for sure.

Have a look at the pics above… The kids absolutely love singing and dancing and many of them are actually fantastic dancers with amazing rhythm (my thoughts on African dancing will warrant a whole blog entry of their own at a later date, once I have managed to pick my jaw up off the ground). There are also four or five wanzungu guys here who are pilots/geologists from NZ and Adelaide and are here flying planes for diamond exploration for a few months (it’s so completely random, the wanzungu you meet in the middle of nowhere). They got a big and pleasant surprise when they met the HAPO folks and vols a few weeks back and now visit with the kids a lot when they’re not up in the sky. It all seems to make for a great group of people to go out with on the weekends, as I found out last night on my inaugural trip to the Tabora Hotel where we ate (food has to be ordered an hour in advance) and danced until 2am. The truly wired amongst us continued on to one of the two nightclubs in town but I was pretty delirious by then and staggered home to pass out under my mosquito net, only to be woken by two very insistent roosters at about 4.45am. So I may not be in Kansas anymore but there seems to be plenty to keep everyone occupied, especially since saturdays are for playing with the kids in an unstructured way. Basically we work six days a week and then Sunday is for doing absolutely zilch… a routine I think will suit me well.

I feel like I could go on for hours about what Tanzania smells like, and how the wind feels, and how everything seems to move incredibly slowly but with ultimate direction and purpose, but you know… I only just got here. But I wanted to write my initial thoughts so I wouldn’t forget and also so you could all know I am here safely. Email access is readily available and easy so I will be able to keep in regular contact with you all. I have tried to post some video but it doesn't seem to be working so I will try it again later (and probably somewhere else, although I don't like my chances!).

Karibou tena…Sasa hivi nitaandika tena.

Hey Mzungu! Mchumba! Mpenzi!

In Australia, it's not so unbelievable that I am 30 and not married, or that I am 30 and no one has yet asked me to marry them (I mean in the non-joking sense). But in Tanzania it appears to be a concept as ridiculous as not supporting a soka team. I have been here since 4pm Sunday afternoon and I have been into Dar itself exactly once, and so far the marriage proposal tally stands at six. Yes, six. And it doesn't seem to matter to any wanamume if they are married already. Everyone wants to be my mchumba (fiance) or my mpenzi (lover). So, apparently it never rains but it pours, and if marriage is what I want, I should have moved to East Africa a long time ago.

Aside from the abundance of potential wachumba, I am having a wonderful time in Dar as we prepare madly for our dispatches to different parts of the country on Saturday. I'm here with Emma (Scotland) Rachel (England) and Lauren (Australia by way of England) and the three of them are going to Mwanza on Saturday while I head off to Tabora to meet the three vols who have already been there for six weeks. As you can imagine it's slightly daunting to imagine arriving in Tabora alone (arriving in Dar with Emma - we met in Dubai airport - was daunting enough) but I'm sure everything will be fine once I get there. Right now I'm enjoying the very Isaac Dinisen experience of sleeping under a mosquito net and being slightly worried about the vicious Napalm/Hiroshima effect that the required nightly insect room-spray appears to have on any and every living thing in our room... if it annihilates millipedes in a tenth of second, what might it be doing to me? Si kitu.... karibou Afrika...

After spending exactly 90 minutes in Dar yesterday I am actually incredibly glad I will be in a relatively small town - Dar is completely maniacal with a strange sense of normality and modernity, but I can't imagine being able to walk around alone. There are people absolutely everywhere and the traffic-pedestrian relationship is as bad as anything I've ever experienced, but every second shop sells cell phones and many signs are in English. The country was socialist until fairly recently and you can see both the signs of socialism and the signs of development - as in, NONE of the streets are paved, even in the middle of the city, but there's some extremely cool-sounding swahili hip-hop on the airwaves. We were taken into town yesterday by Loyce our swahili teacher, crammed into the back of a daladala with 19 other people (yes, that made 24 people in the back of a minivan - I counted) and it was lucky the van was so crowded I couldn't see out the front or I may have converted to Christianity on the spot in order to save my soul. Once in town, Loyce took us through the markets but became quite worried about having to take care of all four wazunga women and began muttering darkly about men who would chop off our hands to get to our bags. Needless to say that had a sobering effect on the shopping mood and we tended to stay out of one particular food market (which still rate amongst my favourite travel atractions, no matter where I am in the world) where Loyce felt the pickpocketing vibe.

Despite her premonition, my initial perception of Tanzanians is that they are incredibly warm, good-natured, kind to and patient with wazungu. No one's in a hurry here and everyone wants to help - and all the proposals and cat calls and shouts of "hey mzungu!" are all in good fun. During our "cultural do's and don'ts" lesson (OMIans take note!) it was stressed how important it is to dress modestly and do as the locals do - Loyce explained that there's one rule of acceptance and indulgence for watalii (tourists) but quite another for volunteers who are coming into the country and teaching (read: influencing) the children. I like that pride and I hope I can get through the next 10 weeks without offending anyone too badly (swearing is a real no-no here .... I may as well give up right now....). Overhwlemingly, I think it is the language that will provide the biggest source of frustration but at least I don't have any trouble whatsoever with the pronounciation - some people really struggle with that whereas it's understanding kiswahili speakers themselves that is the problem for me. Sure I might be able to string a sentence together, but what does that mean if I can't understand their replies?!

I've decided that email and cell phones are both a blessing and a curse because I can stay in touch with people so much easier but this makes me miss everyone more! I'll post this now in case the electricity conks out and I lose everything... hopefully will get a chance to load some pictures and update again before heading to Tabora at the crack of dawn on Saturday (the morning after we are, rumour has it, being taken out dancing.... yikes).

More again soon....

Six and a half hours to liftoff

When I was eleven years old, my parents took my brother and I back to South Africa to visit the country they grew up in and the land in which I was born. It was 1988 and Apartheid was taking its last few dying breaths; I remember my father driving the Garden Route in our rented car, singing all the advertising jingles he remembered of South Africa in the '60s ("sticks like crazy, sticks like crazy, Scotch Brand cellophane tape") and my mother crying to a security guard who tried to confiscate her camera when we went to see a musical about Cape Town's District Six. But my strongest memory is of the black hitchhikers we picked up along the long drive from Pretoria to Cape Town, who walked the long, long highways on their way to and from jobs throughout the country, always leaving or about to return to families living along the way. They would climb into our rented van and sit in the back seat with my brother and I, cap in hand (did I mention this was during Apartheid) and my parents would talk to them in Afrikaans and English, asking about their families and jobs and the situation in the country. They began every sentence with "Yes Baas", even when my 7 year old brother was the one asking the question. And of these men, I remember most vividly the one we drove with for about an hour. He was a carpenter and it was almost Christmas; he had been up north looking for work but had found none and was now about to return to his wife and children empty-pocketed. As we stopped the car by the side of the road to let him out, my father turned around, handed him a 50-rand note, shook his hand, and said, "there you are my friend, buy your children some Christmas presents".

Years later, Dad told me that he picked up those hitchhikers so that my brother and I could have some personal contact with the 20 million or so South Africans who were kept so separate from people like him when he was our age. In 1988, it was perfectly safe and customary to pick up hitchhikers and 50 rand was a lot of money for a black carpenter. Back then I thought, wow! my parents are so kind! so generous! so liberal! such anti-Apartheid hippies! I want to grow up to be just like that. I want to help Africans too. It was an experience and an insight into a world that has stayed with me for nineteen years and, if I really thought about it, is probably one of the defining reasons I grew up to want to go and work in Africa. I would like to think that my initial eleven-year-old impressions and goals have somehow morphed into aims that are more realistic and less framed in a culture of "kind white people helping poor black people", but I am sure that the essence of the desire remains the same.

My dad recently lamented to a friend of his that his daughter was giving up "a perfectly good house, a perfectly good job and a perfectly good social life to go and live in the wilds of Africa so she can change the world - and you think your kids have problems?". Well, I never said I was interested in changing the world, but I have to admit, I am curious to see what I might be able to do in one tiny little part of it.

So, there's my long-winded introduction to this, my very first blog entry of my very first blog on the day I leave for three months in Tabora, Tanzania (that's in East Africa, for those who need to consult a map). It's 4pm on Saturday afternoon and I have weighed myself with my backpack (72 kilograms - 53 of which are me, so my luggage gets in just under the mark), I have quadruple-checked that I have my malaria prophylaxis (I just like writing the word "prophyalxis") and my passport and have tried to calm down by reminding myself that anything else can be bought in Dar-Es-Salaam. Then I thought - hang on, I'm going to East Africa! They may have mobile phones in abundance, but will they have dental floss? But it doesn't matter anyway; there's no way anything else - even a stingle string of dental floss - is going to fit into my backpack.

For anyone who doesn't yet know: I'll be in Dar-Es-Salaam from 21 to 27 October, and then in Tabora (in the Western Plateau area, towards Lake Tanganyika) from 28 October to 13 January. I'm working with a local Non-Government Organisation called HAPO (Health Action Promotion Organisation), a partner Agency with Volunteer Africa (www.volunteerafrica.org, for description of my program - see "Orphans and Vulnerable Children" link) that works with the most at-risk children in the Tabora region to increase life skills and HIV prevention and awareness. I've been planning this trip for about six months and have been thinking about it for about ten years. Now that the day is finally here, I feel like I am about to enter some kind of weird suspended animation period, in which part of me will remain here and a parallel me will be in Tanzania. I feel that that feeling will dissipate the second I get off the plane in Dar (at least, I hope it will - I always found that suspended animation scene at the end of Aliens really creepy).

I'm trying hard not to expect anything, and I am hoping the fairly excellent mood I have managed to cultivate recently stays with me throughout this journey, as I feel that motivation and initiative will be, after my malaria PROPHYLALXIS, the two most important things I can carry with me.

I'm feeling scared but ready.

I wish my Swahili was better (I can point at things and name some of them, I can say "please speak slowly" and I can differentiate between one's oldest and youngest wife, but that's about it). I hope, I hope I manage to get at least a handle on communication, because it makes such a difference.

I hope I don't get malaria.

I hope I am able to continue to update this blog in Tabora because I've had a great time writing this entry and am really looking forward to exploring the idea of a public journal (I will have to leave out the swear words, which, as anyone who knows me, will be a big challenge).

I hope I make some Tanzanian friends and learn to cook ugali.

Hope you all enjoy reading and that you leave messages!

Kwa heri and wish me luck....